(12) Buddha replied: ‘O noble youth, homage of the law is this: the profound scriptures preached by Buddha are so subtle and so difficult to understand that all the world is unwilling to accept and believe them; so they are pure without blemish; they are unobtainable by mere discrimination or thought; they are enclosed in the treasury of virtues of a Bodhisattva; they are sealed with the seal of Dharani; they lead to the state from which one never retreats; they perfect the six Paramitas; they rightly discriminate the meaning [of all things] ; they are in accordance with the law of Bodhi; they are superior to all other scriptures; they lead to great mercy and compassion; they are far above all the temptation of evils and heresies; they are in harmony with the law of causation; they transcend self, individuality, personality and durability; they are empty, formless, aimless and causeless; they are capable of elevating beings to a seat in the Bodhimandala and roll the wheel of the law; praised by all deities, serpent gods, and Gandharvas; they are capable of leading beings to the mine of virtues of Buddha ; they comprehend all wisdom of the wise and the holy; they preach the paths walked by Bodhisattvas; they are based on the doctrine that all things are real; they unmistakably proclaim the doctrine of transiency, sorrow, emptiness, selflessness, and annihilation; they are capable of saving all who are guilty of trespassing the precepts ; they are capable of causing fear to evil ones; heretics and those who are greedy; they are praised by all the Buddhas and saints; they turn against the sorrows of birth and death, and show the happiness of Nirvana; they are preached by all the Buddhas of the three worlds in the ten quarters —

(1) To win this jewel of the Thought I offer perfect worship to the Blessed Ones, to the stainless gem of the Good Law, and to the Sons of the Enlightened, oceans of virtues. All flowers, fruits, and healing herbs, all gems and all waters clear and pleasant in the world, likewise mountains of jewels, forests sweet in their solitude, climbing plants bright with ornaments of flowers, trees whose branches bend with goodly fruit, fragrant incenses, trees of desire, and jewelbearing trees in the worlds of the gods and their kin, lakes bedecked with lilies and wondrously pleasant with the cries of swans, harvests springing without tilth and crops of grain, and all else adorning them whom we worship, all things that are bounded by the spreading ethereal sphere and are in the possession of none, I take in spirit and offer as guerdon to the Supreme Saints and their Sons. Worthy of choicest gifts and great of compassion, may they mercifully accept this of me! I am exceeding poor, and without righteousness; there is naught else for me to offer. So may their care for others' weal be for my weal, and let the Lords take this in their native grace. Yea, I give to the Conquerors and their Sons myself entirely. Take me for your chattel, O noble beings; I make myself in love your slave. By being your chattel I am freed from fear in life, and work good for living creatures; I escape my former sins, and do evil no more....

(3) Eager to escape sorrow, men rush into sorrow; from desire of happiness they blindly slay their own happiness, enemies to themselves; they hunger for happiness and suffer manifold pains; whence shall come one so kind as he who can satisfy them with all manner of happiness, allay all their pains, and shatter their delusion — whence such a friend, and whence such a holy deed? He who repays good deed with good deed is praised; what shall be said of the Son of Enlightenment, who does kindness unsought? He who sets a banquet before a few is called a " doer of righteousness," and is honoured by the world, because in his pride he entertains men for half a day with a brief largesse of mere food; but what of him who bestows on a measureless number of creatures a satisfaction of all desires unbounded in time and perishing not when the world of heaven perishes? Such is the Master of the Banquet, the Son of the Conqueror; whosoever sins in his heart against him, saith the Lord, shall abide in hell as many ages as the moments of his sin. But he whose spirit is at peace with them shall thence get abundant fruit; and truly, wrong to the Sons of the Conqueror can be done only by great effort, but kindness towards them is easy. I do homage to the bodies of them in whom has arisen the choice jewel of the Thought, and even the ill-treatment of whom leads to happiness; in these mines of bliss I seek my refuge.

(11) Adoration to him whose eyes are pure, wide, and long as the leaves of the blue lotus, whose mind is pure and ever wrapped in fullness of meditation, whose meritorious deeds infinite in number were accumulated by him for ages, and who leads all beings with the ways of perfect peace.

(4) Therefore, O king of deities, he who holds, recites, and reveres the scripture is said to honour all the Buddhas of the past, the present, and the future. "O king of deities, if there be many Tathagatas so many in number even as the bushes, whether of sugar-cane, bamboo, reed, paddy, or hemp, and the three great Chiliocosms may be full of them, and a son or daughter of a noble family will honour, revere, praise, and pay homage to them and dedicate their dwellings to them for the space of one kalpa or thereabout, and after the passing of those Buddhas, he or she will elect a Stupa of seven jewels containing the perfect body of each of the Tathagatas as wide as the four worlds and as high as the heaven of Brahman, erecting a pole adorned with all magnificence and do homage to them with all the rarest flowers, all kinds of incense, garlands, banners and music, for the space of one kalpa or thereabout; what dost thou think, O king of deities, is the merit planted by this man much or little?”

(2) With as many obeisances as there are atoms in all the Domains I adore all the Enlightened Ones of the past, present, and future, the Law, and the noble Congregation. I worship all the memorial-sanctuaries and the dwellings of the Son of the Enlightened; I salute the preceptors and the worshipful holy men. I take refuge with the Enlightened One, awaiting the coming of the perfect Light; I take refuge in the Law and the Congregation of Sons of Enlightenment. With clasped hands I make supplication to the Enlightened Ones dwelling hi all regions and to the most merciful Sons of Enlightenment. Whatsoever be the sin that I, poor brute, in my beginningless round of past births or in this birth have in my madness done or made others do or approved for my own undoing, I confess the transgression thereof, and am stricken with remorse. Whatsoever wrong I have done by sin against the Three Gems or father and mother or other elders by deed, word, or thought, whatever dire offence has been wrought by me, a sinner foul with many a stain,

(6) Buddha spoke to the king of deities: "It should be known that the merits of a son or daughter of a noble family who hearing this scripture of Inconceivable Emancipation comprehends, holds, recites and practises it would obtain greater merits than those. And why? The Bodhi of all the Buddhas springs forth from it; and the essence of the Bodhi is infinite. For this reason the merits are immeasurable.”

(1) The Lord Buddha addressed Subhuti, saying: “If an enlightened disciple, in the exercise of charity, bestowed as considerable an amount of the seven treasures as might fill worlds numerous as the sands of the Ganges; and if a disciple, realising that within the meaning and purport of the Law, there is no abstract individual existence, perfects himself in the virtue of endurance, this latter disciple will have a cumulative merit, relatively greater than the other. And why? Because, enlightened disciples are entirely unaffected by considerations of ‘reward or merit.’”

(24) Adoration to thee who art capable of breaking all the fetters of passion. Adoration to thee who hast reached the other shore. Adoration to thee who art the saviour of the world. Adoration to thee who art forever free from the way of birth and death.

(6) The Lord Buddha addressed Subhuti, saying: “If a good disciple, whether man or woman, day by day sacrificed lives innumerable as the sands of the Ganges; and if another disciple adhered with implicit faith to a stanza of this Scripture, and diligently explained it to others, the intrinsic merit of such a disciple would be relatively greater than the other.”

(9) Then those thousand princes according to their father’s command honoured the Tathagata Bhaishajyaraja during five kalpas dedicating a dwelling to him and other things. There was one among those princes named Candracchatra who [one day] sat alone and thought to himself: ‘ Can any homage be superior to this [homage] ?’ Then through the supernatural power of that Buddha there appeared in the sky a deity who declared: ‘No homage is superior to homage to the law.’

(20) To the assembled Deities, to the Tutelaries, to the Gurus, Humbly is obeisance paid: May Liberation in the Intermediate State be vouchsafed by Them.

(1) The Lord Buddha addressed Subhuti, saying: “If a disciple, having immeasurable spheres filled with the seven treasures, bestowed these in the exercise of charity; and if a disciple, whether man or woman, having aspired to supreme spiritual wisdom, selected from this Scripture a stanza comprising four lines, then rigorously observed it, studied it, and diligently explained it to others; the cumulative merit of such a disciple would be relatively greater than the other.”

(23) Adoration to thee who possessest the ten powers and art ever diligent. Adoration to thee who hast obtained the four kinds of fearlessness. Adoration to thee who hast obtained the supernatural power. Adoration to thee who art the great leader.

(1) The Lord Buddha, continuing, said unto Subhuti: “Wherever this Scripture is proclaimed, even though it were but a stanza comprising four lines, you should realise that that place would be sanctified by the presence of the whole realm of gods, men, and terrestrial spirits, who ought unitedly to worship, as if before a sacred shrine of Buddha. But what encomium shall express the merit of a disciple who rigorously observes, and diligently studies, the text of this Scripture? Subhuti, you should realise that such a disciple will be endowed with spiritual powers commensurate with initiation in the supreme, incomparable, and most wonderful Law. Whatever place constitutes a repository for this sacred Scripture, there also the Lord Buddha may be found, together with disciples worthy of reverence and honour.”

(17) He, like Mount Sumeru, unmoved by worldly fame or slander, shows mercy equally to the good and the wicked; his mind, like the sky, shows no partiality. Who reveres not this jewel among men ?

(13) if a man hear such scriptures as these, comprehend, hold, recite, and through the power of the necessary means, discriminate, explain, and make them manifest clearly to all beings, and thereby preserve the law, he for these reasons is said to pay homage to the law. “ ‘

(1) The Lord Buddha addressed Subhuti, saying: “If a good disciple, whether man or woman, in the morning, at noonday, and at eventide, sacrificed lives innumerable as the sands of the Ganges, and thus without intermission throughout infinite ages; and if another disciple, hearing this Scripture proclaimed, steadfastly believed it, his felicity would be appreciably greater than the other. But how much greater must be the felicity of a disciple who transcribes the sacred text, observes its precepts, studies its Laws, and repeats the Scripture that others may be edified thereby?”

(1) The Lord Buddha, continuing, addressed Subhuti, saying: “If a good disciple, whether man or woman, devoted to the observance and study of this Scripture, is thereby despised, or lightly esteemed, it is because that in a previous life there had been committed some grievous transgression, followed now by inexorable retribution. But, although in this life despised or lightly esteemed, the compensating merit thus acquired will cause the transgression of a former life to be fully expiated, and the disciple adequately recompensed by the attainment of supreme spiritual wisdom.”

(19) All things which the world can produce, are seen manifested therein; all assembled praise the lord beholding the wonder which has never been seen before. Adoration is due to the Honoured One in the three worlds. The Great Sage, the king of righteousness, is the only refuge of all beings; there is none who remains unhappy when once he with serene mind beholds the lord; everywhere he beholds the lord before him; this is a special feature of his supernatural powers.